By Emily Przekwas - @eprzekwa

Garden-to-table restaurant, The Kitchen combines community seating with fresh, American cuisine in an eco-friendly setting to create a unique dining experience. The Kitchen’s mission statement, “Community Through Food” accurately illustrates the simplistic approach to the restaurant, as well as its charity counterpart, The Kitchen Community. Owners Hugo Matheson, who graduated from Leith’s School of Food and Wine in London, and Kimbal Musk have taken a hands on approach with this venture in an effort to alter the way our society views the foods we eat.

The goal: source locally grown ingredients to support local farmers, as well as ensure the food is as fresh and healthy as possible. Seems simple enough, right? This approach is actually quite innovative, and its yielding simpler menus and more distinct flavors in The Kitchen’s delicious meals.

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Yesterday marked the grand opening of a new concept store in Chicago called Studio Xfinity, the first retail store of its kind in the nation. The idea? To merge “great content, great interaction, and a place where people can gather,” explained John Crowley, Comcast’s Senior Vice President of Greater Chicago, at a ribbon cutting ceremony in the Clybourn Corridor this morning.

The store will focus on customer experience—an ode to the past—and Xfinity will use the store as a sort of playground for innovation. Most notably, they’ve launched an app, which will contain every customer’s history. The idea is that customer service will be more intuitive and keep subscribers more “plugged-in” and less focused on the rigmarole that sometimes keeps customers from entering big box stores.

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